Back to Data Drudgery

I finally settled into being retired and at home all the time, including getting through the fishing and hunting seasons, getting a month-long cold or flu from visiting relatives, and then making it through the holidays. I’m back to finishing the drudge work of recording the data from each letter before I begin the transcribing, and have yet to fall in love with this database software, FileMaker Pro. For some reason, the data field for the date of each letter was converted to “timestamp” when I converted the original Bento file, and when I change it to “date,” I can’t get the letters to order correctly, so I guess I’m going to work with a copy of the file to see if I can correct the fields. Otherwise, it forces me to put a time with each date (e.g. 2/12/1942 12:00), which is annoying, in addition to being unnecessary and meaningless. I’m sure I’ll figure it out, but why can’t it be easy, like Bento? Yes, I’ll get over it.

Anyway, the data recording will be over soon, and I’m also adding the letter scan to each record, which I mentioned in the last post (with images), so the records will be more useful in the end, especially for sharing. I’m anxious to get into the transcribing. To help me get out of retirement mode and back into working mode, I’ve decided to wear my casual work clothes instead of the t-shirts and yoga pants I’ve become accustomed to rather quickly.

Interesting note—someone referenced one of my posts on punctuation in a YouTube video the other day about punctuation and it brought in an avalanche of site visitors, who I’m sure are wondering what’s going on here. It was my post about the punctuation called the dog’s bollocks and the video even referenced my image of the letter. It’s kind of buried in the video in a section about emoticons at about 3:09-3:22 minutes. Wait for it. You can see the video here: http://youtu.be/O9ak89FwYeI